Hooch With Hooch
by Cordelia McGonagall
Summary: A fifth of teacher banter for the Lounge. McGonagall and Hooch chat about the children over whisky and cigars. Thanks to JKR for all.


**For Susan, who gave me this prompt, thanks. :) And for Jude, my Madam Hooch. To my dear Brits, all spellings aside, I am sure this American butchered many bits of a conversation between two elderly British women. Feel free to set me straight in the reviews. :)**

 **Hooch with Hooch**

Every fortnight, on a Friday evening after lessons and nursery-hours' tea, Minerva McGonagall and Rolanda Hooch met for whisky, cigars, and conversation about their students' welfare. They kept this ritual, with few interruptions, through generations of students. Soon after Madam Hooch was hired for her flying instructor post, she craved real friendships. She found herself unprepared for the realities of teaching, for there are few other professions where one can interact with people all day and still be lonely. After fifty years, Rolanda still found the first-year students' first flying lesson as thrilling as they did, but other people's children were a poor substitute for companionship. Drinking port with drowsy Armando Dippet in the staff room was hardly a jovial evening. And then Albus - _oh, Albus_ \- as gentle and brilliant as he was, he always had one eye on some instrument, all polished brass and glass and inscrutability. He supported Puddlemere, for goodness' sake. Rolanda was fairly certain it was only to put something interesting for children on the Chocolate Frog cards. _Puddlemere. Honestly._

When Minerva was hired, only two years fresh from her time at Hogwarts, she joined Pomona Sprout, making a pair of the youngest teachers at the school. Pomona was shy, cheery, and plain. Everyone knew where he stood with her. A good Quaffle. Minerva was more challenging, for it was clear she was running away from something. She wouldn't let on to her Captain if she saw the Snitch. She wasn't the type to enjoy a nasty gossip or reveal much about herself, but Rolanda could see she too was lonely. Rolanda had reached out. _Perhaps a drink after classes on Friday?_

It started out the three women, but Pomona soon made excuses. The Mandrakes needed watching over. It was a fine evening to look for mistletoe. In truth, neither Minerva nor Rolanda protested much. Separately they both realized she was holding the pair of them back. To smooth a conversation, they edited for Pomona. She was entirely too sincere for their comfort. She would moralize about their work, and she lacked the gallows humor. She didn't understand that their conversations, though withering, improved their craft - that it took a deep and abiding love for children to refer to one over drinks as a distilled, potions-grade pillock.

Pomona also hated cigars. With as much love as she had for some of those greenhouse plants, Rolanda wondered out loud if it would feel as if they were lighting up her friends in a grisly act of murder. "That's why I don't inhale," murmured McGonagall, as she sliced off the tip of a Cuban and slid it across the table.

 _I really like her_ , thought Rolanda.

So it remained the two. They considered including others, but there was always a reason not to. No one understood Charity's television references. Sybill sucked litres of sherry through a straw, and Severus was unfortunately still a git.

Over time, the meetings developed a rhythm and an agenda, points of order that would guide their sips of whisky and puffs of cigar. First they had a call to order.

"What is this, then?" Rolanda put her nose into the whisky glass and breathed in the smoky, peat of the amber liquid swirling in her grasp.

"Lagavulin," Minerva smiled over her glass. "Did you managed to evade Delores?"

"I did, indeed. She stopped hunting for an invitation and left a notice of 'Intent to Inspect Lesson.' Form 30B." Rolanda rolled her eyes.

Minerva smirked. "How did that go?"

Rolanda matched her smile. " Creevey is determined on that broom. Might not get the bulk for a Beater, but I'd keep an eye on him for Chaser. High altitude maneuvers went down a treat. Useful to have that pink globule for orientation, as it turned out. She had the decency to bring a camp chair. _East of Pink, thirty degrees, Gryffindors!_ "

Minerva huffed out a smoke-filled laugh, loosened by the first sip of whisky. "Her existence is insulting, but I've not had to pass out a detention for behavior in my classes thus far; the children see we have a common enemy."

"What about Potter?"

Minerva's face smoothed to impassive. One of the tragedies of war was the need to keep secrets, and Rolanda was unaware of the return of the Order. It wouldn't do for all those who opposed Voldemort at Hogwarts to be in as much danger as she was. "The boy who grabbed a broom when your back was turned hasn't changed one bit. Harry's headstrong like James. I had hoped he would have learned the lesson quicker, but it's been a battle of wills that won't end prettily." She was wading into swift waters and needed to retreat to safer footing. "Potter seems to be fancying Chang."

Rolanda's pulled a face. "I thought he fancied Granger."

"No, that's Weasley."

"Yes, Fred."

"No! Ronald."

"Mmmm," Rolanda shook her head. She'd been a Captain, a flying teacher, a referee for a lifetime. All she did was watch. "I don't know. Look at the lot of them together sometime. I can always tell those boys apart if Hermione Granger is around. Fred likes getting a rise out of her. He looks to her when he says something outrageous."

"I thought Fred was seeing Johnson."

"If you say so."

Minerva and Rolanda enjoyed pairing up the children and making wagers on future marriages, though they would have been mortified if this truth were brought to public attention. Classroom seating charts and partners in flying lessons had led to dozens of weddings, and though they had been toasted to at more receptions than they could remember, no couple yet realized the parings had been considered and thoughtfully prearranged in the staff room hazy with smoke.

Minerva sniffed. "Longbottom needs to stop mooning over Ginevra. A Cannon aspiring to the Tornados, he is."

"Flobberworms are out of Longbottom's league at the moment."

"You are quite horrible. He's a decent boy. Probably better in Herbology than Granger or Woodbridge."

"I'm sorry Pomona," Rolanda smirked, "your Animagus looks quite a bit like our Transfiguration professor, but you sound as mawkish as ever."

Minerva looked thoughtful. "I haven't been called an animal since my last Quidditch game against Ravenclaw. Neville will show the lot of you. Abbot is a lovely girl. Let's arrange it. Their children will be charming."

"Charming squibs," Rolanda murmured into her glass.

"Now, now, Severus, no one likes it when you show us how much you hate children."

Rolanda chuckled. "Severus has been rather silent this week, hasn't he?"

"He's got his hands full with that Slytherin lot. They never used to be so dreadful."

"You've always had a bias."

"Yes," Minerva acknowledged, "but it's getting rather difficult to find pleasant ones. Parkinson and Mills are insufferable. Nott makes my flesh positively crawl. He stands entirely too close, and he does it to be intimidating."

"Quite. He's not gormless, like Goyle."

"Theodore's distressingly like his father. You remember how he was."

Rolanda nodded at the table grimly. "Adams never did tell Armamdo who it was though, did she?"

"No."

The women grew quiet, each staring at the curls of smoke coming off their cigars. Every fresh group of faces was new to them, even if the names held layers of meaning. The women endeavored each September to set memories aside and focus on each new child without prejudice, for children would often soar beyond or sink below others' expectations. They had found the Slug Club contemptible. They were unnerved by Severus, who was frozen in time.

Rolanda cut the silence, her voice quiet. "After how vicious Lucius was at dear Elphinstone's funeral, I worked to like Draco. I wanted him to be better."

Minerva was startled by the tears pricking at her eyes. It must be from the smoke and whisky. It didn't hurt to think about her husband anymore. Not like Dougal. She blinked her eyes quickly and took a pull from her cigar. "Draco is very bright, more than his fool father, to be sure." She sighed. "He's no Tom Riddle, but he would be, if he had the nerve."

"I suppose that is what made you think you had time to save him from himself."

"Albus would think there is always time left."

Rolanda waved this off. "Albus can sit in that chicken coop of gadgets and think anything he wants. All he does is think."

Minerva smiled. Over half a century of teaching, and Rolanda still didn't understand what the professors did all day. It was fine. Minerva still didn't understand how Hooch got Longbottom airborne. They didn't need to understand everything. They had their children in common. That would have been was enough. The whisky didn't hurt, either.

Rolanda left off scowling about Dumbledore for the moment. "How are the Patil girls? Did I hear correctly that their father sent you an owl?"

Minerva rolled her eyes. "Perhaps I need my own chicken coop. The girls are quite well. Mr. Patil believes, incorrectly, that I am the most sympathetic of his daughters' teachers. He owled to complain about the weather last Hogsmeade weekend. The girls were chilled and wet, which he found to be an unacceptable lapse of management on our parts. We should have made it brisk and sunny."

Rolanda nodded. "Oh. A Muggle, then."

Minerva let out a giggle that was so girlish that both she and Rolanda started in surprise and then began to laugh in earnest. "No! He's a ridiculous wizard! His wife is a Muggle doctor. I received a letter of apology from her a week later, intercepted from the Muggle post."

"This explains Parvati and Padma very well."

"It does, rather."

"He sounds almost as tiresome as Finnegan's mother. You have won the parental lottery this year, Professor McGonagall."

Minerva rubbed her temple and remembered a worry that had made it ache this week. "How is Ainsworth? I've told Pomona. The boys are starting to tease him again, and I can't keep an eye on him well outside the castle."

"I've been paying attention. He seems better. I'm hoping last year was the worst of it. You keep watch over Lovegood. I think I gave half the Ravenclaw girls detentions last week, and they still sneak around to tease her. Poppy tells me she came to the infirmary last Wednesday sobbing when she got her first period. She's terrified of blood, and that nitwit Xeno forgot to tell her she wouldn't be dying."

"Didn't she hear anything from the other girls by now?" Minerva marveled.

"They are so nasty that I think she tunes them out."

Minerva slapped her hand on the table in exasperation. "Why do we not have a programme about this, again?"

"Now do you agree with me about Albus? You should have seen his face when Poppy went to tell him. Turned as grey as Sir Nicholas. Perhaps we should have Poppy speak at the start of term. _Hem, hem. Let us move forward, then, into a new era of openness with biology, effectiveness with birth control, and accountability with consent and bullying..."_

Minerva sputtered a cough. "Oh! This whisky's too dear to choke on!'

Rolanda was on a tear. "You would think Severus, with all the teasing he endured from Sirius and James, would help with these children."

Minerva looked grim. "That's a brave proposal. Have you forgotten he gave as good as he got? I just wish he'd be his best self to - "

"Harry?"

"No. That child is fueled by others' venom. It pains me to say it, but he could have been in Slytherin. Have you watched Potter with Malfoy? No, I meant Granger. She doesn't need to be called a know-it-all by a professor who bullies everyone else save Malfoy for being stupid."

Rolanda gaped at her. "Snape called her that?"

"The Ravenclaws found it amusing."

"Oh, she will be fine. She's tough."

But should she have to be? Good lord! Collins should have to stand like everyone else for his Transfiguration demonstrations, but I don't ask him to, not after that first one. I'd be relieved that they grow out of it, but younger lads keep coming into this school. A true peril of the profession."

Rolanda made a sympathetic face. "Oh, is he your wooden soldier this year? Would it help to swap the benches for separate desks? What do the others do about it, I wonder?"

Minerva pulled a face. "You ask Septima and Filius what they do when a student gets an erection in class. Severus probably assigns an essay about Engorging Potions. Git."

Rolanda nodded. "Twelve inches of parchment."

Minerva's eyes narrowed dangerously. "This is why Pomona doesn't drink with us anymore."

"I'm thinking I shouldn't be drinking with us anymore. Do you ever think about retiring, Minerva?"

"We can't. Not now. We need to stay until he's gone."

"Harry?"

"No, Voldemort! You remember what it was like when I came here. The owls I got. The people who'd stop me in Hogsmeade to ask me why I'd run away from something important. Forget the Ministry! This is the front line of it all." Minerva swept her hand around the room with its shabby, mismatched furnishings, leftovers from various Common Room remodels from centuries back. "Here. Just here. Tom Riddle was a monster in a Muggle orphanage, but we made him who he is now. We made him. He recruited here, picking students right from our arms." Minerva's voice cracked. The whisky was making her tired tonight.

"Harry recruits here."

Minerva wished wars had weekends. "I'm afraid I have no idea what you are talking about."

Rolanda nodded. "Momentary lapse. Forgive me, friend. I'm staying, too."

"I knew you would."


End file.
